Signaling hub providers and wholesale carriers provide connection services between companies for a specified time and price. When the agreements change, the routes that were established between the two companies are removed or prevented from allowing messages to pass. More particularly, routing rules maintained in network routing nodes (e.g., SS7 signal transfer points (STPs), SS7/Internet protocol (IP) signaling gateways (SGs), session initiation protocol (SIP) routers, proxies, and gateways, and H.323 routers, proxies, and gateways) must be manually re-provisioned to remove or disable routes corresponding to the expired agreements. Manually reprovisioning routing tables when agreements expire can be difficult, especially if multiple service agreements exit simultaneously.
FIG. 1 is a network diagram illustrating a transit network 100 that routes traffic between other networks 101-106. In FIG. 1, transit network 100 includes STPs 107 and 108 and SSPs 109 and 110 that connect and disconnect each network 101-106 based upon business agreements. For example, for 1 month, network A 101 can connect to network F 106 at a designated rate per call, after which the agreement ends and network A 101 cannot reach network F 106 via transit network 100. The owner of transit network 100 may have made a subsequent agreement with the owners of networks B and E 102 and 105 that takes effect when the network A-F agreement expires. For the agreement with the owners of networks B and E 102 and 105, transit network 100 will need to provision routes into STPs 107 and 108 when the agreement period starts. In addition, trunk group mappings must be provisioned in SSPs 109 and 110. The operator who owns STPs 107 and 108 effectively wholesales its capacity to networks A and F 101 and 106, but only at the appropriate time. When the agreement between network A 101 and network F 106 expires, the transit network operator must remove or inhibit the trunking translations in SSP D 109 and SSP C 110 and also remove or inhibit the routes in STPs 107 and 108. In order to enable routes for new agreements and disable routes for new agreements, the routing tables in STPs 107 and 108 must be manually updated. Such manual updating is time- and labor-intensive, especially when multiple agreements must be simultaneously maintained.
Accordingly, there exists a need for improved methods and systems for administering time-based routing agreements.